How To Be Dead
by ElvendorkInfinity
Summary: You don't care. If you tell yourself that often enough, it will come true. You don't care. [Warning: Character death.]


**Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock Holmes, in any incarnation.**

**Note: It's been so long since I posted anything new on here, I had actually forgotten how to. Hello again. (I'm mostly over on AO3 nowadays).**

**I wrote this over a year ago - before series two had even aired. I'd pretty much forgotten about it but a conversation with prettybirdy979 reminded me, and here it is. Character death, angst, and deliberate vagueness. You have been warned.**

You open the door of the flat to silence, and tell yourself that you don't care.

You've left the hospital against the advice of every incompetent doctor your brother insisted on consulting. You've ignored their stupid, predictable, _boring_ warnings about complications and risks and...Oh, you don't know. You weren't listening.

You still aren't listening, only this time it's nothing you aren't listening to.

It should worry you that your thoughts are running in such nonsensical patterns, but it doesn't.

You are ignoring the silence, because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, and you don't care. You really don't – _really_...

00000

You don't care when you scrape at the violin until four in the morning and no one tells you to stop.

You want to scream until your throat hurts as much as your chest does, but you don't have the energy.

You don't care.

It shouldn't make a difference. You've lived alone before. It shouldn't feel so empty.

You lived before _him_. Or at least, you existed. Why not afterwards?

There's something missing. Not just _him_ – from you. Something physically missing, like a lost limb. It's wrong. It _feels _wrong, and you shouldn't have to feel. You don't want to.

00000

You want to be angry with him. Not for _leaving_, not for – for – why can't you even think the word?

No. You aren't stupid enough to be angry with him for something he had no choice in.

But you _are_ angry – no – _furious_. Because he made you like this. He _weakened_ – he's _destroyed_ you.

You were fine without him. And then he came, and he gave you something, but you still aren't sure what it was.

Except that now it's gone, you _need_ it back. Whatever it is or was, you hate him for making you so dependent on it.

00000

Three weeks and two days and you think you might be getting there.

You don't care. If you tell yourself that often enough, it will come true. _You don't care_.

So what if he isn't here? You don't need him. You never needed him.

The reason you don't move for three days is because you don't _want_ to, it's nothing to do with him.

Mycroft's threats have no effect. You ignore him.

Mrs Hudson makes you move, eventually. She makes you eat. She makes you coffee in his mug, and you don't know why, but it makes your eyes sting.

00000

Five months and you're working cases again.

Mycroft keeps talking to you, but you never listen. You don't know what he says.

You haven't really heard anything in weeks. You still solve the cases, but you don't notice them anymore. It doesn't feel any different than the in-between periods. It's all just stagnation.

You're...empty. You don't like it. It hurts, and you don't know why because you – don't – _care_.

You hate to feel, but you're not even interested in puzzles now. You'd do anything to have that thrill back.

No – almost. You would do literally _anything_ to have _him_ back.

00000

You are not you. You know you aren't. It has taken you a long time to work it out, but you realise it now. And you know why.

He isn't the only one who was – who was – but you can think it now, it's okay. If you were killed as well, it's okay to acknowledge that he was.

You don't really care, of course. What difference does it make? It's an emotion, and you can lock those away. You always have. Now is no different. It never has been.

You don't care, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't...

00000

After a year, you give up. You stop trying to convince yourself that it doesn't hurt because it _does_ and it won't _stop_ and you'd do _anything_, to just make it _STOP_.

John Watson is dead, it's all your fault, and it's never going away, not _ever_, and you don't want to care but you do and you don't know why and you don't know how to _not_ and nothing even _matters _now.

He is gone, and so are you. You don't understand why, because you managed before you met him, but not anymore. You aren't here if he isn't.

00000

They try to stop you going. Nameless people. Police? Maybe. Mycroft? Probably. But they are stupid.

They cannot do this. Only you can.

And anyway, what difference does it make to you if he's armed? What difference does it make to you if he won't hesitate to fire? He can't kill a dead man.

You hear the gunshot when you're running, but you barely notice hitting the ground.

There's blood. A lot. It's yours.

You feel cold.

And now you really, truly, do not care. It's not what you had in mind, but it will do.

You close your eyes.


End file.
